It seems like all the key players are in place to push through a new lobbying reform proposal — lawyers, scholars, public interest groups and even lobbyists themselves.

But there’s one missing ingredient: outrage.

With no specific malfeasance in the headlines, the congressional appetite for the new rules is so low that even lawmakers who backed reforms in the past aren’t signing on this time, making good-government types grumble that only a salacious scandal — think the return of Jack Abramoff to Capitol Hill — can get their plan moving quickly.

“I’d be blowing smoke if I said this proposal is about to catch fire. You’d need some kind of spark,” said Tom Susman, director of the American Bar Association’s government affairs office and counsel to its lobbying reform task force, which drafted the proposal.

Task force members suggested amending the Lobbying Disclosure Act to enact a two-year ban on lobbyists engaging in fundraising efforts for members of Congress whom they lobby and to narrow the lobbying reporting threshold from 20 percent of one’s professional work to a “reasonable” but unspecified percentage.

The rub: The proposed rules will have to compete with other issues dominating Congress, such as job creation, trade, budget deficits and even the 2012 elections.

“It’s clear that Congress doesn’t have an interest in jumping in on this fast,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a task force member.

“You wouldn’t find three members of Congress who today have this on their priority list,” said Nick Allard, chairman of Patton Boggs’s lobbying, political and election law practice.

And William Luneburg, a University of Pittsburgh School of Law professor, predicted that “at minimum, a couple of years will pass before anything happens.”

If there is movement, it’ll be in the House, argued Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.). Quigley, who has aggressively pressed for lobbying reform during his two-plus years in office, said his House colleagues might be more apt to consider the bar association’s recommendations than the Senate, which he described as “the land of the lost.”

Still, Quigley himself wouldn’t say whether he would sponsor legislation that included the bar association’s lobbying reform language — in June, he introduced his own bill, the Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act, that in part addresses similar themes. That bill is stuck in a House subcommittee.

But Quigley said he hopes elements of the bar association proposal are introduced in Congress. And then, “we should at least have a hearing on this new proposal and ask for a markup by the end of year,” he said. “It sure should be one element in regaining the public’s trust.”

Reform inertia comes as unemployment rates remain painfully high, public approval of Congress has plummeted to all-time lows and a U.S.News & World Report poll in November reported that 38 percent of voters, upon having a wrecking crew at their disposal, would first task it with dismantling Washington’s lobbying establishment — far more than wanted to target media companies, labor unions, courts or businesses.

The number of registered federal lobbyists has also declined in recent years, with some political observers speculating that hundreds, if not thousands of K Street professionals are using lax disclosure laws to skirt public acknowledgment of their lobbying activities.

The ABA also recommends that “lobbying support” activities that are not currently matters of public record — strategizing and polling, for example — be disclosed.

Other recommendations include:

• Banning lobbyists from soliciting campaign contributions to the reelection campaign of a member of Congress “whom the lobbyist has been retained to lobby for an earmark or other narrow financial benefit.”

• Banning lobbyists from entering into a contingent fee contract with a client to “lobby for an earmark or other narrow financial benefit for that client.”

• Transferring Lobbying Disclosure Act enforcement to a “suitable administrative authority and empower that agency to utilize appropriate tools such as rule making, investigation and imposition of civil or administrative penalties.”

In recent history, the most dramatic lobbying reforms have followed the most infamous shenanigans.

Take 2008, when superlobbyist Abramoff had been shipped to prison after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy. Then, President George W. Bush signed into law the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. It set in place numerous new rules and regulations including those governing gifts, sponsored travel and working as a lobbyist after serving in government.

Several members of the House Ethics Committee would not return requests for comment on the ABA proposal, and Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), another Ethics Committee member and frequent critic of federal lobbyists, declined an interview request.

That prominent lobbyists and public interest advocates alone reached consensus on the bar association proposal — something akin to New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox fans singing “Kumbaya” during a 7th inning stretch — gives some reform task force members at least mild hope that lawmakers will endeavor to consider it.

CREW’s Sloan said the ABA would be wise to press Congress that the proposal “is not such a heavy lift at all,” while the Campaign Legal Center’s Meredith McGehee, a lawyer and another member of the task force, argued that Congress has no reason not to take it up this autumn.

“Look, this is not people on the outside creating some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption,” McGehee said. “This is a great opportunity here to consider something that’s very reasonable and practical and that’s both in the interest of the public and the K Street community.”

Indeed, the proposal is largely backed by the American League of Lobbyists, an industry trade group that says today’s murky lobbying laws create an unlevel playing field in Washington, where people who regularly lobby can get away with not registering as a lobbyist.

Therefore, said league President Howard Marlowe, “we are going to be lobbying for lobbying reform and not hoping for it.”

Allard, the Patton Boggs lobbyist, notes that “most significant pieces of legislation have a gestation period longer than that of an elephant, and some parts of this, particularly the campaign contribution ban, would be extremely controversial.”

But, he quickly added, “you have to start the process somewhere, though.”